Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Some governments promote unity among their various political and ideological factions to achieve their goals. They prioritize dialogue to secure positive outcomes for the population. Leaders engage with all political forces to identify common ground that paves the way for national harmony, despite their differences. Dialogue and consensus-building represent a refined political culture.
There are also governments that foster polarization and hatred as a means to achieve their goals. They deny the validity of those who hold differing opinions. Dialogue exists only for those who agree with the ruling party. There is no culture of reconciliation, but rather one that promotes confrontation. For their polarizing efforts to succeed, they must identify tangible targets of hatred for the population captive to their ideology.
In Mexico, this second type of government is in power. Morena fosters hatred, bitterness, and division as its preferred tool for staying in power. This comes as no surprise to anyone. Bitterness has become normalized, especially for the targets of hatred. So much so that the president is heard repeating her list of targets of hatred every morning. It is her nature. It could not be any other way. The very act of the morning press conference is an imposition on the country. It is “Big Brother” speaking to the population, so that the ranks of defenseless citizens may be ordered, so that they may obey authority and conduct themselves according to the rules and ideas sculpted each morning by that mundane noise. Thus, the barbarities uttered by the president this past week raise no eyebrows or cause anyone to blush. Hatred, slander, and insidiousness are normal.
This week has been particularly complex, due to the start of the World Cup, the government’s failures with its pre-opening projects, the multiple social protests that have taken place, and pressure from the United States regarding the USMCA negotiations and the indictments against Morena’s narco-politicians. Since this government is not normal, the president and Morena chose to navigate a critical week by following the script of hatred and confrontation. The examples are chilling.
To identify her targets of hatred, the president resorted to a phrase as basic as it is uncertain. She said: “The extremes (of the far right and far left) meet…” She said this, referring to the fact that, in her opinion, both Ricardo Salinas Pliego and the leaders of the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE) agreed in criticizing the government for its practices of corruption and repression.
She expanded on her analysis: “They are all from the far right, both Salinas Pliego and the CNTE leaders, because they are driven by a common interest… which is to criticize the government.” Aside from the mediocrity and simplicity of her analysis, the president wanted her supporters to hate Salinas Pliego, as a millionaire, just as much as the CNTE leaders, for being uncontrollable. Thus, this week, the president identified a new object of hatred: the far right, represented equally by Salinas Pliego and the CNTE leaders. There is not the slightest intention of engaging in dialogue with any of them.
Lurking within that far right, like an evil shadow, the president also singled out the U.S. far right, which, brilliantly, does not include Trump. In any case, Trump would be the useful idiot of the American far right, just like Salinas Pliego and the CNTE. Although inexplicably, the CNTE is controlled by the People’s Revolutionary Army (EPR), leading one to conclude that this Marxist political-military organization is also part of the far right. As a sign of rejection of the CNTE movement—which she and AMLO supported and exploited for years to solicit votes—she now places them within that volatile target of hatred known, for lack of better analytical terms, as the “far right.”
Promoting hatred is also a smokescreen to avoid exposing her de facto alliance with drug trafficking, as well as to hide her inability to design a model for the country based on the rule of law and with institutions that serve the public interest without government control. Investment is not growing because it observes the actions of the Supreme Court justices and perceives the falsity of the government’s political proposal.
The target of hatred that the president unveiled this week is the “far right,” a concept she uses to encompass all her opponents. Given the far right’s characteristics, the president will not engage in dialogue with them. She speaks only to her own people. And she actively fosters hatred against the new enemy.
The president also does not speak with the mothers searching for the disappeared. She has addressed them with harsh, hurtful, and insulting remarks: “They use the disappearances for another purpose that some later wish to assign to them.” She insinuates that the families’ demands have “political overtones and are being used by my political adversaries.” It is the presidential way of disparaging the movement. For the record, President Calderón never did that. In line with the president, the Secretary of the Interior hinted that she would investigate who had covered the costs of the mothers’ trips to Mexico City to participate in the World Cup opening ceremony marches.
The president has thus extended her “silent treatment” from Salinas and the CNTE to include the mothers searching for the disappeared. She has said she will not receive them. This presidential behavior amounts to saying she lends no credibility to that movement. It is, in fact, exactly what the PRI did in its day with Rosario Ibarra de Piedra’s “Eureka” movement. The government of that era ignored the movement, even persecuted it, but most importantly, it denigrated it. Sheinbaum is doing the same with the mothers’ movement searching for the disappeared. So, if by “far-right” we mean opinions and movements that contradict the actions and conduct of the ruling party, then the mothers searching for the disappeared qualify as “far-right.”
Similarly, the parents of the 43 missing students from Ayotzinapa can be labeled as far-right. Sheinbaum also refuses to meet with them. She claims they already know what the government is offering them. She says that if she meets with them, they will use that meeting to spread propaganda against the government. The president claims they have a hidden agenda, driven by unspeakable interests, and that she will not be held hostage by those agendas.
On top of all this, the president has also not met with the leaders of the opposition parties, notably the PRI and the PAN. Should they also be considered part of the far right? Sheinbaum wants to render everyone invisible: the opposition parties, Salinas Pliego, the CNTE, the searching mothers, the parents of Ayotzinapa, and any movement that emerges with a critical stance. The president has merged narratives, viewing all opposition as part of a new far-right theory of chaos. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that if the president does not speak with a person or a movement, it is because they are or will be labeled far-right.
The president has rejected dialogue and consensus as the best route to resolving the serious problems facing the nation. The question that remains is: how far does the president intend to go with this battle cry against her targets of hatred, who make up more than half the country? Because at the end of the path she has chosen looms the destruction of the Republic.
@rpascoep
Further Reading: